


such meet food to feed it

by TomBowline



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, First Meetings, GNC James Fitzjames, M/M, Pre-Relationship, francis “i’m only working here bc tom said i needed to get out more” crozier, i guess? somewhere between crack and crack treated seriously, james "the sexual tension between me and the cashier who keeps rejecting my coupons" fitzjames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26991490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline
Summary: James was seriously considering taking his grocery business elsewhere.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 19
Kudos: 86





	such meet food to feed it

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Much Ado About Nothing_ 1.1 because, like, of course.

James was seriously considering taking his grocery business elsewhere.

This was saying something, indeed, for he had taken pains to find a grocers’ that suited his taste and his budget, and the one he had found was damned near to perfect. True, Fairbounty was - sin of sins - a chain, but still a local one within the city, which translated into an aura respectably crunchy without being too much so. And besides that, there was one just a block down from his office. So every Friday after work, James popped in to do the week’s shopping and hunt for whatever he might need, loosely speaking, over the weekend. It had all been going rather swimmingly - they had fresh bread out twice a day so he wasn’t sifting through the stale stuff from the morning, they carried James’ favorite cheap wine and his favorite posh soaps, _and_ they had started sending him monthly coupon books. Really, James hadn’t wanted to change a thing.

The winds of fate, it seemed, had other ideas.

From the very beginning, James’ rapport with the new cashier had been inauspicious. James had set his Merlot onto the belt, given his most winning smile to the man, pointed to the _WE CARD UNDER 35_ sign, and joked, _Aren’t you going to card me?_ He had received a flat unimpressed chuckle and an, _I think I’ll take your word on it_ , for his trouble. James was well aware he was skating on the far side of forty, but really now. That stung. 

This blow alone he might have recovered from, but what came next was worse by far. The cashier took one look at his coupons - clipped lovingly from the book at his kitchen table the previous evening, placed carefully into his work bag in anticipation of the next day’s visit - and shook his head. “We’re not accepting these,” he told James - quite unapologetically, he thought. 

“You—” James was blindsided. The man hadn’t even looked properly at them, for Christ’s sake. “Are you sure?” He tried a different winning smile, this one with just a touch of self-effacing confusion added in. Big eyes, knit brows, quirked mouth - couldn’t fail. “They’re all current, I get a mailer from the store.”

The cashier shrugged. “I’m quite sure. We’re not participating in these promotions,” he recited. Really, not an ounce of contrition in his voice. Scandalous.

“You can’t— Yes, alright. But—” This was not on James’ agenda. The mere thought of all the money he’d been saving gone down the drain of this careless new cashier was chilling. He leaned into the counter sidewise, decided to try a different tack.

“Listen, Frank, if you must know—”

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. The cashier burst out at once, red-faced and fuming: “Now where do you get off calling me Frank?”

James paused deliberately, cast a pointed glance downwards. “It‘s on your name tag.”

“That’s—” The cashier turned even redder, if possible, and fumbled at his chest as if hiding the tag would erase it from James’ memory. “Never mind that.”

“Well, what am I meant to call you?”

He could have said, _Nothing_. He could have said, _You’re meant to pay the full 80 pounds and take your fancy fucking soaps and get out._ James might have, in his place. Instead he closed his mouth deliberately and, looking as if he gave this information up not entirely of his own will, said: “Francis. My name is Francis.”

“Well, Francis.” The man’s face twitched as James said his name, and he almost thought he was about to be shouted at again, but _Francis_ stayed quiet. “If you must know, you’re upsetting a long-held tradition. As well as tying up 12 pounds 5 that I have much better uses for. Oh, and they call me James, by the by.”

The cashier - Francis - sighed a long, put-upon sigh and tipped his head back, then forward, then side to side. James waited, bemused, for this little ritual to have done with so he could get home to his baking and his Scandinavian crime shows. After an absurd number of moments Francis leveled his gaze back at James and deigned to reply. “Fine then, I’ll bite. What the hell are you on about?”

James drew up to his full height, tossed his hair a bit. Began. “When I was at university, I had no idea how to shop.” A snort from Francis; James pressed on. “I would prance about the grocers like a headless chicken and run up a bill that would stretch from here to Normandy. I was living quite beyond my means. ’Twas my flatmate who finally set me to rights.” James let a fond smile drift over his face then, entirely genuine. Sheila was a remarkable woman. Besides the coupons, she had taught him how to cut his own hair (badly), how to shave his legs (passably), and how to brew beer at home (quite well). In the end he’d gotten so tangled up in the confusion of whether he wanted _her_ or wanted to _be_ her that they’d been quite driven apart. He was still sorry for it. “Sheila Kumar.” He imbued the name with all the reverence it deserved. “Her dad had taught her, and now she would teach me. Hours we sat at our cramped little dining table—” James gestured expansively— “clipping out coupons from the papers. But my god, man, it was worth it. We felt like conquering heroes each time we got home from the shopping. Joy from frugality, the doctrine of Sheila. It’s an amazing thing, Francis. To this day, I carry on the ritual.” He nodded with an air of finality. 

“Eh.” Francis gritted his teeth a bit. “Right. That doesn’t change the fact we can’t accept these.”

Some people, thought James as he bundled his canvas sacks of full-price fucking groceries out the double doors, were simply heartless.

•••

The next time he saw _Francis_ was exactly one week later, and went scarcely better. Again he brought his coupons to the register, along with the goods he had selected strategically to get the best savings. And again Francis cast them down at James’ feet like some wrathful tyrant of old. Well, not literally. He took one look at the precious little slips of paper and sighed, “My god, man. You know they won’t work.”

“Au contraire,” James replied with a strained joviality. “I thought perhaps you’d had enough time to see the error of your ways. Maybe consulted a supervisor.”

“Consulted a—” If James concentrated he could just see the steam beginning to curl out of his ears. “Right,” he growled under his breath, slamming down a bundle of Swiss chard with what James felt was undue force. “Not as if I’ve known the owner of this damn fool shop from the cradle.” He took a deep breath and addressed James again in that wooden, blank tone. “I can try running one through the scanner if you feel you need proof. It has been known to crash the register software, though, receiving non-approved coupons.”

“I am sorry,” James said with a put-on worried look, “that me trying to do my shopping in the store you work for causes you such pain.”

Francis stared at him, unmoved. “I wouldn’t worry yourself unduly,” he returned crisply. “To me you are but a small sooty spot on the pristine fireplace of my retired life.”

His skill in metaphor needed some work, and James opened his mouth to tell him so. What came out was this: “You’re retired and you work at the grocers?” Damn. Tactless. This was perhaps a bit over the line, even if he had moved from charm offensive to passive aggression.

Yet Francis seemed unfazed; he only shrugged and kept scanning James’ chocolate bars. “Only on the weekends. Got to do something, haven’t I?”

James barely bit back something to the effect of _Take up gardening like the rest of us_. “You know the owner?” What was wrong with him today? And why couldn’t he at least follow up with _Is he to blame for this devilry?_

“Oh, aye,” Francis snorted. “The franchisee, more properly. Tom Blanky.” His face contracted as he squinted at James, who was struck suddenly by how expressive the man could be when he wanted to. “You don’t know Tom Blanky?”

Shrug. “I don’t live around here.” Snort. “Of course you don’t.” James decided to let the conversation die its inevitable wasting death there, and left the store having once again paid more than he had planned.

•••

 _Only on the weekends_. James turned it over in his mind as he tried to keep his balance on the tube in his pointed suede low-heel boots - casual Friday, it had been. He knew, now, when Francis would be in. He could avoid him entirely. It would be as if they’d never met, never clashed over a buy-one-get-one.

Except. 

Why should he change his whole life to suit this spiteful little man? Shopping on Fridays was convenient, bordering on fun in a way that Monday shopping would never be. No, James would keep his schedule. He refused to blink first.

•••

“You retired from what, MI6 torture squad? HMRC auditor?”

“Mm.” Francis continued punching in James’ leeks, seeming singularly unimpressed by what he had thought were very witty jabs. “Forced into early retirement, if you must know. Running polar adventure cruises.”

James tried to imagine Francis at the helm of a ship cutting through the dark waters of the frozen North, and found it...disturbingly easy. He had a sturdy, solid frame that offset his shorter stature, and there was a certain set to his brow that gave an air of capability and knowledge. When he wasn’t being impetuous and joyless over a few little pieces of paper, that was.

“I’ve always wanted to go on one of those,” James mused idly. Francis gave an unduly vitriolic snort and muttered something that sounded like, _Of course you have._

James raised his eyebrows, the picture of affront. “Oh? What’s that mean, then?”

Francis had an unequivocally sour look on his face now. Anyone would think James had tried giving him a coupon (a coupon sent him by the store, a coupon that ought by all rights to be bloody well viable). “Only that some people go about thinking themselves bleeding great adventurers and never consider the impact on the rest of the world. Damn Empire mentality. It’s the 21st century. Christ’s sakes.”

He slammed down various of James’ groceries in the bagging area - pouch of candied ginger for sweet rolls, bag of coconut sugar for tea, block of cultured butter for incidentals - to punctuate his grumbling. James had the impression he was mostly talking to himself now, or to some absent third party. He was only thankful his eggs had been through already.

When Francis seemed mostly soothed by this abuse of another man’s dry goods, James seized his chance. He had decided, this week, to go for broke. “I don’t suppose…” He slid the week’s relevant coupons discreetly across the counter, pinning down a £20 note beneath them. He gave Francis a third, slightly desperate winning smile.

Francis only stared at him. _Implacable as an iceberg_ , James thought, then cursed himself for having such a poetic thought about the man who was ruining his life. “Good Christ, no,” Francis said at length, with the tone of someone who’d just been asked if he was to be the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. 

James sighed and withdrew his inducement. Made his best job of not stuttering or going red in the face as he gathered his goods and hurried out of the store. It did not signify what Francis thought of him. Not one bit. No reason why it should.

•••

Today Francis had on a white linen shirt, rolled up past his elbows. Presumably, it was to combat the blasts of unseasonable warmth that washed over the cash register each time the double doors opened. Presumably, it was not engineered specifically to torment James. But regardless of such academic presumptions - tormented, James most certainly was. 

The freckles were the first thing. They crowded together on Francis’ skin, overlapping each other to form patterns (like waves, James thought, like waves on the beach in Iceland, or more like Brazil). Beyond that there was the sheer sturdiness of his forearms - that he could steer a ship’s wheel, James no longer doubted; he rather envisioned him pulling lines and tying sheets on an old Man o’ War, climbing the rigging. It was all covered over with a blanket of gently curling hair, which was red-blonde and light enough to be nigh invisible but caught on the fluorescent lights of Fairbounty and shimmered just so. He had to stop looking. He was going to stop looking. 

He had all but given up on his coupons by now.

In his quest to avoid staring at Francis’ forearms, he caught sight of a faded shape in blue-black ink on his bicep, just visible beneath the sleeve. An anchor, he thought, with a date underneath. Crossing the Atlantic, James’ mind supplied immediately. 

“You were in the Navy?” The words came out before he could think better of it. 

Francis coughed a laugh. “Oh, god, the tattoo. Young and stupid is what I was. But yes.”

“So was I,” James said. And for what? Was he trying to impress this man now? Did he think his military credentials would improve his chances of getting his hard-earned ten percent off? Good god.

In any case, Francis did not look impressed. Not that he looked _un_ impressed; curious was more like it. “I wouldn’t have guessed it,” he remarked, mapping out James’ figure - his silk shirt, long hair, high-waisted trousers - with his keen blue eyes. 

He might have been affronted at this statement - _men like him_ certainly existed in the Armed Forces, and everywhere else, no matter what some might think - if he hadn’t spent the last decade of his life trying to be just the kind of person you would never guess had been in the military. “Yes, well.” He tossed his hair a bit, just for illustration’s sake. “Got to grow into a much prettier sort of pansy once I was out.”

“Ah, well.” Francis seemed to fumble with his words for a moment. “Cheers to that, then.”

“Right.” James smiled flatly. He turned to collect his groceries.

“Wait, no, look—” He turned back to see Francis struggling with his other sleeve. At last he managed to get it up almost to his shoulder, revealing a second tattoo - a small pink triangle, almost as faded as the anchor.

“Oh!” James felt something bright in his chest. “Yes. Cheers.”

•••

“Aw, Jas.” Dundy pouted. His face said _concerned friend_ , but his posture in the kitchen doorway said _fashion magazine centerfold_. Dreadfully vain, but it took one to know one, James supposed. “You want me to come along for moral support?”

“God, no,” James scoffed. Never mind that he wasn’t even totally sure he was going to go through with it - in any case he would look deranged enough standing in a checkout line to ask the cashier out without bringing a mate along with him.

Dundy looked almost comically offended. Quite possibly, James thought, he was fucking with him a bit. “Now why not? You never let me come along when you ask out strange cashiers round the hippie food shops.” Alright, definitely fucking with him. Fine then. Two can play. 

_“Because,”_ James drawled, “everyone who sees us together thinks we’re married, and I’m not keen to have him think I’m off limits.”

If Dundy had been offended before, now he was projecting open horror. “Absolutely not. People do _not_ think we are _married_. Take it back, Fitzjames.”

“Shan’t.” James, affecting cool disinterest, swirled the bottom inch of red wine in his glass as he spoke. “People used to think we were fucking, now they think we’re folding each other’s laundry and doing the dishes together.” He couldn’t suppress a smirk as Dundy dropped limbs-akimbo onto the sofa beside him with a groan and propped his sock-feet on James’ nice vintage coffee table. “Mind the furniture, now.”

“Oh, don’t tell me what to mind. You’ve ruined my evening, James Fitzjames. I ought never to’ve come over. Made me contemplate having to fold your laundry, good god. _Married_.”

James tossed the arcane new remote at his dear friend’s head. He would let Dundy figure out how to navigate to Criterion on his own wits. “Do put the film on, Henry.”

•••

It was now Thursday evening, less than twenty-four hours before James’ standing appointment to become the biggest fool he’d ever made of himself (including the time he’d jumped into a river fully clothed to save a man who had turned out not to be drowning, after all), and he was having a bit of a think about it. By which he meant, psychological chaos reigned.

After all, there were so many important things he hadn’t told Francis - how he’d not just been in the Navy but crashed out of it rather spectacularly, how he’d gone AWOL from his entire life for two months in his early thirties while he was off having a crisis of gender in Iceland, how he and Dundy might not be married but had gone through long stretches of the _with-benefits_ variety of friendship. What if he got it wrong, he thought? What if he’d fucked something up so far in his past that he couldn’t do anything about it, and Francis got scared off? Or what if he were too young? Too showy? Too ridiculous? What if his first impression (and second, and third) of being an impetuous bargain fiend was simply insurmountable?

James took a deep breath. Then another. Then he went out with a cushion and sat in his cramped little back garden and started yanking weeds up, because deep breathing had never really cut it for him.

The bottom line was this, he decided after a good half hour of weeding: Francis had seen his groceries, all of them, for the past month and change. He knew James’ strange rituals, his peevish moods, his bag of tricks to talk his way into things (James remembered in equal fondness and trepidation the succession of winning smiles he had thrown at Francis and the way they’d slid off him like so much undercooked spaghetti creeping down a wall), and his fussy preferences vis-a-vis bread, sugar, soap, and most all else. And he’d had _fun_ talking to Francis these past weeks, sparring and sniping and extracting intriguing bits of each other’s life stories quite by accident in the process. He felt with conviction that there could be something between them, and damn the great blasted embarrassing secrets. Francis was sure to have some too.

And if he got turned down, James thought with a giddy sort of terror, the worst that could happen is he’d have to find a new place to do his shopping. 

•••

When he came up to the register Francis met him with his usual impassivity. “Right then.” He heaved a sigh, drumming his fingers on the counter. “Let’s see ’em.”

“No coupons today,” James reassured him with a tight smile. Lord, but he felt like a prize fool. Setting his gold beets and new potatoes on the belt and running over a come-on in his head, good god. “I actually have a question, if you’ll hear it.” He leant against the counter in a way he hoped was nonchalant. 

“Asked me enough already, I should think,” Francis returned, but his prickliness sounded more good-natured than James had yet heard. “Go on, then.”

“Alright.” He nodded twice, quick and sharp. “First let me preface this by saying I have no expectation one way or the other. If you say no, I’ll be happy to switch stores, or shop while you’re not working. I don’t want to impose.”

Francis’ eyebrows were slowly climbing his forehead as James delivered this speech. He opened his mouth as if to interrupt, but James held up a hand. “Now, with that said. Francis.”

Francis dipped his head, leveled his sharp gaze to make bemused eye contact. “James.”

 _He remembers my name,_ James thought, _that’s got to be something._ Deep breaths, now. Not too many, don’t be weird about it. Now. “Would you ever want to go for a pint sometime? A— date, rather.”

Christ. All the grace of a teenager. Rushed words, stupid trite phrasing. James grimaced involuntarily. 

Francis looked to be having rather a private little war with himself on the other side of the counter. Whether this was good or bad, or signified anything at all, James was uncertain. At length Francis slapped his hand down - James jumped a bit at the noise, mortifyingly enough - and spoke. “Lovely offer, I’m sure, but…” Hell. “I don’t drink.”

Damn. Well, that was that. James would take it with grace, would kiss goodbye the fresh bread and fresh fruit and all the wonderful deals (that he hadn’t been getting for a few weeks now anyway) and find a new grocers’. Such was life.

Francis looked up at James, with a look on his rough expressive face that James would call _cautiously optimistic._ “Make it a coffee?”

James’ face split into a grin, organic and artless. Not a winning smile, this, not anything really; it was pure reaction. “Absolutely.”

**Author's Note:**

> i don't want to mislead anyone by implying that cashiers remember customers' names; Francis was absolutely huddled around the shop computer with Blanky that last Thursday night trying to find James in the membership register. He picked him out by his favored brands of cheap wine and posh soaps.


End file.
